"The mission of the Festival of Dangerous Ideas is to provoke debate, to get people out in public talking about ideas, to encourage people to really have an opinion," she says.

"We think there are a lot of things that are quite important to us that we don't talk about enough.

"What the Festival of Dangerous Ideas provides is a really accessible forum for people to come along and engage with difficult and big ideas, and also some more light-hearted ideas as well, but to really get out there and to think and talk and meet other people out there who are interested in the same kind of thing."

Among the topics to be discussed are: The War in Afghanistan Has Just Begun; We Are All Sexual Perverts; Bono and Bob Get Out of Africa; Abolish Private Schools; My Workplace is a Cult and All Australians Are Racists.

"There are two things that we really look for," Ms Mossop says.

"Obviously you could get somebody to talk about any extreme thing that you wanted.

"The idea has to have some relevance here and now. There are a lot of dangerous ideas that have nothing to do with people in Australia now.

"There has to be some edge of reality for our audience.

"(And) people have to have some position of authority from which to speak.

"Whether it's from your experience, whether it's from the community you live in and you know, whether it's from something you have done or something you have written, you have to have a psoition of genuine knowledge and expertise."